Call it Texas football pageantry on afterburner, fired by championships. Since 1988, the school has won eight state football crowns, including three of the last four at the big-school level. Over the past five years, the Dragons are 72-2.

There is the use of two part tariffs:

The concrete grandstand includes 1,621 reserved seats for season-ticket holders, who buy $90 three-year seat licenses to ward off the long waiting list.

There are the first-rate facilities:

Having great facilities certainly helps. This suburb of airline pilots, business executives and Dallas Cowboy football players living in $500,000-plus homes provides the Dragons with three outdoor practice fields and an indoor center that covers a 60-yard-long turf field.

There is revenue sharing:

The Carroll Independent School District is among the Texas districts that pay into a “Robin Hood” fund for less-fortunate schools. This year it will send $11 million.

After having studied various facets of sports economics for the past 13 years or so, it still interests me how similar the motivations are for for-profit and not-for-profit sports programs. Of course being not-for-profit doesn’t really mean that you can’t have profits as your objective. All having this status does is restrict how profits can be distributed.